The Goldwater Institute announced that a new report finds activist faculty are requiring diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programming in the honors colleges at Arizona’s leading public universities.
The report, titled ‘Desert Brain Drain,’ says that Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University and Franke Honors College at the University of Arizona have shifted toward what it describes as taxpayer-funded vehicles for ideological projects. The institute said this trend affects the academic experience for honors students.
According to the Goldwater Institute, over 70% of mandatory ‘The Human Event’ course sections reviewed at Barrett Honors College included DEI and anti-capitalist materials, one-sided views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and sexually explicit content. The report also cites a film depicting ‘the dynamics of a queer relationship’ in Hong Kong as part of required coursework. At Franke Honors College, students must complete an ‘Honors Seminar’ with sections such as ‘Eating the Globe: The Diverse, Weird, and Queer Food Politics,’ which asks whether food can be colonized or decolonized. Another seminar called ‘Cut and Paste: Constructing Identity through Collage’ requires students to use art supplies to explore identity and political activism.
To address these concerns, the Goldwater Institute recommends that Arizona lawmakers consider restricting university appropriations until faculty hires and syllabi are reviewed by the Board of Regents. Other recommendations include implementing provisions from its American Higher Education Restoration Act to end automatic state funding for activist research and supporting a constitutional amendment to prohibit mandatory DEI coursework in public higher education.
“Students shouldn’t have to endure lectures on works like Postcolonial Love Poem and ‘Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Experience,’ nor be forced to choose from carefully curated lists of ideologically driven courses simply to graduate with honors,” Timothy Minella, Director of Higher Education at Goldwater Institute and one of the report’s authors, said. “This isn’t just an Arizona problem. Taxpayers and lawmakers across the country should pay attention to what’s happening in their universities and not sit idly by while activist professors indoctrinate our next generation of leaders on the public dime,” Minella said.
More information is available at the Washington Free Beacon.
